"It hurts. It hurts. Fuck—it hurts."
Thalien would have screamed if not for his wrist jammed between his teeth, muffling the sounds of agony that surged from the pit of his stomach like a curse. Blood welled where his teeth broke skin, but he didn't care.
Pain was pain—it was just that, it could pass if the mind was strong enough.
He knelt hunched over like a broken thing, fingers trembling as they clutched the rim of a stained bucket that stank of bile and ruin. The contents within were a grotesque swirl of yellow froth and half-digested scraps—the last meal he would ever romanticize. Bread, meat, maybe a bit of carrot—it all swam in the acid froth like flotsam from a wrecked ship.
"Too slow," he muttered hoarsely, "Too fucking slow in rejecting it, I shouldn't have wasted that much time …"
